Word: japanized
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...past 20 years or more, Japan has successfully sold its superinfectious brand of pop music in other Asian markets. Now the South Koreans want to follow suit. The vocalist Rain - among the TIME 100 in 2006 - remains the international face of K-pop, but a host of other artists are eager to follow in his wake. Their appeal to Western audiences remains niche - Rain himself has struggled to make an impression in the U.S., despite a ton of MTV appearances and onstage backup from the likes of Omarion and Diddy. That leaves Japan as the prime foreign market...
...these is Big Bang, a domestically successful five-man hip-hop group formed through a Making the Band - style reality show in 2006. A Japanese-language mini-album (With U) enjoyed some success in 2008. Big Bang now hope their debut full-length Japanese-language release - having entered Japan's charts at No. 3 - will deliver the coup de grace. The good looks of the creators certainly won't harm the disc's chances. (See the Asia's best bands...
...Read a story about Japan's vampire rock...
...After Japan's frustrated voters handed power to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the Aug. 30 parliamentary election, many had hopes that the country's new leaders would begin to solve some of the country's intractable economic problems. Among other popular proposals, the new government, led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, vowed to provide more government assistance for families to promote consumer spending while simultaneously taming the country's ballooning debt, which at nearly 200% of GDP is the highest among rich nations...
...finding it easier to make campaign promises than to keep them. Less than two months after taking over, Hatoyama's administration is being forced into a difficult balancing act between the need to prevent a double-dip recession and the desire to keep Japan's budget deficit from spinning out of control. The recession is knocking tax revenues so far below expectations that the deficit will rise to $548 billion this year, an enormous 10% of GDP. Yet, despite Hatoyama's instructions to keep next year's spending no higher than this year's initial budget of $970 billion...